I am an evil giraffe. But I'm trying, Nick. I'm trying REAL HARD to be the wizard.

Congressional investigators tell CBS News there’s evidence the U.S. Attorney’s office in Arizona sought to cover up a link between their controversial gunwalking operation known as “Fast and Furious” and the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Executive background summary, for those who don’t remember/aren’t following: Operation Fast & Furious was an incredibly ill-advised program where the federal government directed various law-enforcement agencies to permit guns to be illegally resold to Mexican narco-terrorist gangs. The above quote is referencing a situation where some of those guns were traced to the Terry murder scene: the email trail indicates that the ATF was aware of the link between the two cases from the start. This is important because the ATF later attempted to stonewall Congressional investigators out the link, in the person of US Attorney (District of Arizona) Dennis Burke.

No, the answer to that last one is not “Nobody in the White House knew anything about this program.” It’s just come out that the level of communication about Fast & Furious that took place between former ATF Phoenix field office head William Newell and White House national security regional director Kevin O’Reilly was deeper than Newell originally reported. While not a true smoking gun, it does indicate that early assurances that the administration was not involved in this debacle are at best unsupported…

PS: My usual comment about this investigation, at this stage: these things take time to develop. We’re starting to exit the ‘ask questions’ part and starting to enter the ‘here, let me pull on these loose threads here’ stage; patience is a virtue generally, and doubly so when it comes to a (potential) scandal of this magnitude. The real fun starts when people increasingly under the magnifying glass start realizing that while, say, the Attorney General can count on having a signed pardon covering his departure, they cannot…

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But who would sign the pardon for Barack Obama himself? (I’m willing to bet he was in on it — but will Issa and Grassley have the balls to pursue it that far?)

Also, thanks for the counsel on patience. I have torn my hair out in frustration that this thing is not moving faster. One reason I’m concerned is that 2012 gets closer every day — and once the election season completely dominates the news cycle, I’m afraid Gunwalker will be allowed to just fade into the background before we really get to the bottom of it.

And just so you know where the conspiracy community stands on this; Fast and Furious was a deliberate program set up by the CIA and condoned by the Mexican government to arm the Sinaloa cartel to help combat the other two cartels that threaten to bring down the country. Like all good conspiracies, fanciful yet persuasive.

It doesn’t even matter whether Eric Holder knew; it was his **job** to know……….
Oh, wait, sorry. This is a liberal democrat administration that collectively isn’t very clear on the whole concept of **having** a “job”, much less actually **doing** one. Come to think of it, that might explain the utter lack of concern this administration has shown for the hemorrhaging of jobs from this country………

[…] Department had to have gotten briefings as well, but we don’t have proof. Yet.At this point, Moe Lane’s advice is very useful.My usual comment about this investigation, at this stage: these things take time to […]